Generation of bioactive nano-composite scaffold of nanobioglass/silk fibroin/carboxymethyl cellulose for bone tissue engineering

The development of bone tissue construct through tissue engineering approach offers a great promise in meeting the increasing demand for repair and regeneration of damaged and/or diseased bone tissue. For the generation of bone tissue engineered construct, polymer-ceramic composite matrices with nanostructure architecture and mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) of human origin are of prime requirement. Keeping these in view, in the present work a novel electrospun nanofibrous silk fibroin (SF)/carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC)/nano-bioglass (nBG) composite scaffold that mimics native bone extracellular matrix with appropriate composition was designed and fabricated by free liquid surface electrospinning technique. The scaffold possesses desired morphological, structural, biodegradability, bioactivity, surface roughness and mechanical properties thereby exhibited an excellent platform to support the growth of cells. The in-vitro culture of hMSCs over the developed scaffold has shown adhesion, proliferation and viability of cells, thus facilitated cell-scaffold construct generation and further extracellular bone matrix formation through osteogenic differentiation as evident from alkaline phosphatase activity, biomineralization, immunostaining and Runx2/osteocalcin expression assessment. Thus, the developed hMSCs seeded scaffold construct might be suitable for bone tissue engineering applications.